Ep 216 - Summer Reset: Transform Your Coaching Business with Strategic Planning
Episode 216 of the Life Coach Business Building Podcast
Summer is often seen as a quiet period, but it's actually the perfect time for strategic marketing!
If you think summer isn't ideal for building your business, think again. I'll be busting myths and sharing strategies to leverage this season for growth. Plus, I'll dive into valuable tips on scheduling, promotions, and planning to ensure a strong finish to 2024.
Remember, summer can be your secret weapon for business growth. So join me in today's episode as I reveal simple yet powerful business mindset shifts to make this summer count. Let’s dive in!
👉 Read: Miracle Morning by Hal Eldrod
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👉 Create a profitable business that looks good and sets you up to be respected through the Business Building Boutique. Use our proven 4 Phase Business Building Blueprint for growing and building your Life Coaching Business.
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Transcript:
Preview: Remember this boutique style life that you are creating and you're in business for yourself. It doesn't mean that you have to punish yourself and work every day of the week, even if you are still working to grow your business. You deserve time off. If you went to work for a start up company, which you are a start up company, you deserve time off.
You would have time off. You wouldn't go to work for somebody who said, Hey, by the way, you have to work seven days a week until midnight and you get no time off. You'd be like, Oh no, I'm not doing that. So give yourself a break.
Intro: Hello, I'm Debbie Shadid, the host of the Life Coach Business Building podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. Each week I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. If that sounds interesting. Stick around and let's get started.
Welcome to the life coach business building school.
Yep. You guys heard that, right? We're making some changes around here I'm very excited for what we've been up to. I cannot wait to share all the details. I promise details are coming soon. So keep your ears and eyes out for what we're doing. We want to help you build your boutique style coaching business, and we're going to do that in an even better way than we already have.
In this podcast, I want to talk about where you are kind of mid year on your journey to make your goal. I want to talk about summer shifts that you might make because I know what some of you guys are thinking about summer. You're thinking like nobody wants to buy coaching in the summer and that's just wrong.
And then let's talk about forecasting and planning for the balance of 2024. I just completed a 30 day challenge for The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod.
You guys probably remember that book, Back in the Day. It's been out for a long time, but I had an opportunity to have him speak to our coaching group. And I was so excited after I heard from him. I decided, okay, I'm going to take the challenge. And, it's been amazing. Literally from the very first day, I have seen changes in myself and in my business.
What I was missing was thinking time. I didn't have time set aside to do reflections. So like I'm asking you to do mid year reflections. This is a great time for you to download the app, listen to the audio book. I did purchase the book, but I'll tell you guys, I think the audio book is better. There's also a community you can plug into if you want to, but yes, the app is really great and I'm going to give you a clue.
You can do the miracle morning in six minutes. So it doesn't have to be hours of time. And that's one reason why I committed to do it. But that's the way I've been doing my reflecting every day. Is I can ask myself a question. What is it my client needs to hear from me today to understand how I can support him?
What do I need to be doing in the next six months to reach my goals?
So as you think about where you are mid year? Let's talk about what's happening for you right now. How has the first of the year been? I highly recommend that you really do some journaling on this because again, the last 30 days as I've been reflecting every morning intentionally, I've learned a lot.
I really have had some eye opening experiences where I've thought of things in a different way than I was before. What has worked so far for you? Why has it worked? I believe for sure your mindset has so much to do with the results that you're creating. Maybe it's a promotion that went well, but again, I suspect the mindset that you had when you did the promotion is probably why you created the result that you have.
Sometimes there's sneaky times that things don't go so well and you should ask yourself during that time what was going on. I know for me, there's been times when my business has been a little bit flat and when I went back through and did some reflecting, it was like, what was I telling myself during that time?
I was telling myself like I'm out of time. you know, I can't take care of anybody else. Like things like that, even if they're things that you're not saying out loud, they impact your business. So it's good to look back and say, Oh, that's interesting that somehow I had this idea. Like I didn't have time to take care of anyone else.
Is that true? If it's true. Okay. But if it's not, then think about how it affected your business. So look at the beliefs that you have. Think about what beliefs you have to have about the rest of the year. I can tell you that years ago, 25 years ago, when I started my business somebody said to me, the winter months are always the worst.
And December is terrible because it's the holidays. And I was like, okay, I don't want to end December broke. I'm going to make December the best month ever. And I'm going to make sure that the winter months are good for me because I want to have a good Christmas.
I want to have a good holiday. Who wants to have several months that are not good? That was a mindset decision that I made and I shifted my thinking. So where do you need to do that?
For you, it might be over summer. You might be thinking, hey, everybody's on vacation over the summer.
People have their kids at home. Nobody wants to do this stuff over the summer. And maybe it's you that doesn't want to do this stuff over the summer and that's okay too, but own it. If that's true. I happen to think that you can shift your marketing to be able to speak to people about why they want to work with you over the summer.
So, I mean, who would that be? What are the issues that people have over the summer months that could best be addressed over the summer? Think about people with ADHD. I'm thinking about my coaching clients and who they coach. So think about people with ADHD. What a great time to help over the summer. A lot of those guys are college kids or they're young kids in school.
What a great time to help them to coach on that, to help people go back to school prepared. What about anxiety? Imagine anxiety as you're traveling or anxiety because you're with your in laws on vacation. What if your summer was your reinvention time and you marketed that as a strategy for the summer.
Enter into the fall months as a reinvented new you. Your health coaching. This is the time of year where we have more daylight. What a great time to focus on your health. What a great time to focus on fitness. That is so fantastic. I've walked more than I have walked in so long because there's more daylight in the day.
Are you promoting it that way? Whatever the objections are that you think, Your client will have addressed those in your marketing. Are the kids at home? Then share why it's not a problem. Are your college kids at home? Maybe they need support because their kids are home. The college kids are home. You see what I'm saying?
You can enter the marketing from very different angles. Maybe it's time to target a teen who needs your support. I mentioned ADHD. Maybe it's that wellness thing. I was talking to one of our weight loss coaches and I said, wouldn't it be great if you were getting ready to be on a health journey and you could take your health coach with you on your next vacation?
Honestly how about navigating a vacation with a health coach in your pocket? Right? Being able to say, what should I eat? Or where do I get in my steps or how do I do this? That'd be a fantastic opportunity to really get some results when life is not perfectly planned.
So I really do believe that summertime is an excellent time. Now, if you still believe that your clients are not prepared for this, then you have to talk to clients who are prepared for this. This is a very subtle shift in your mindset and in your marketing. Sometimes people will tell me, well, my clients don't have any money.
And I'm like, why are you selling to broke people? I mean, we can laugh about that, but that's true. Why are you not selling to people who want to have transformation over summer? You figure out where those people are and you start talking to those people about summertime transformation. So shift your marketing to be able to accommodate that.
You can literally make massive changes in your messaging for the summer while also making a plan to end your year strong.
So let me talk to you about that. We actually just had our mid year planning session a couple of weeks ago and I want to tell you, I personally worked through my schedule through the end of the year. So I sat down and I figured out when am I taking vacation and I'm doing one in July. When is my team taking vacation? When are the holidays that are going to interfere in our business schedule? I actually looked at the schedule between now and the end of the year and I'm going to have four weeks where we're not coaching or where I'm not coaching.
So that includes my vacation, that includes Thanksgiving week, it includes two weeks over the winter holiday break, it includes Memorial Day, It includes Labor Day weekend, the 4th of July. So there's a lot of days in there that are actually not work days. So as I planned my schedule for the next six months, I looked at when we had availability to work and then I asked myself, what hours do I want to work during that time?
So we planned all the way through the end of the year, what promotions we're going to do. I want to pause for a moment and say. This works even if you don't have any clients because do you know how you get clients? You make a plan. So you can plan for workshops. You could be working on the presentations right now and have your first workshop the Tuesday after Labor Day when everybody is ready for that kind of second new year, right?
That fall jump start to end the year strong. You could spend this time right now. Creating your social media content, creating the emails, learning how to do the technology that you need to do. Then you could spend your time on social media, really networking, connecting with people. You could also spend your time reconnecting with old friends.
Many of you guys are going home for the holiday, you know, sometime over the summer. And this is a time when you might be able to see old friends, connect with them, tell them what you're doing, Rebuild your network over the summer months so that you would be ready to be full on for the fall.
How can you also be thinking about promotions for the fall? So you can already start telling people that they need to end the year strong. We actually have a promotion that I already have scheduled because I did my business plan for the next six months. We have a program where we're going to do our assess and plan live.
We did it the first quarter of this year and I'm telling you what people loved it. We're going to do it for the fourth quarter. So I know what day I'm going to start promoting it And I know what day the program is going to start So what can you do to start? sort of Getting people in the mindset of the fact that the fourth quarter is coming. You want to end the year strong, that's what we're going to be doing. So plan for this. This is how you plan for profit, you guys. You make a plan for what your marketing schedule is. Right, you make a plan for what you want your offers to be. What your calls to action will be. You decide then what you need to do to accomplish that.
Like what are the tasks, the tech, the strategies, the tools that I need to know, create, build before that Tuesday after Labor Day to get going and to get prepared for that. So take the next few weeks and set yourself up for success. I also want to encourage you to take a vacation.
Remember this boutique style life that you are creating and you're in business for yourself. It doesn't mean that you have to punish yourself and work every day of the week, even if you are still working to grow your business. You deserve time off. If you went to work for a start up company, which you are a start up company, you deserve time off.
You would have time off. You wouldn't go to work for somebody who said, Hey, by the way, you have to work seven days a week until midnight and you get no time off. You'd be like, Oh no, I'm not doing that. So give yourself a break. I want to encourage you to take a vacation with no laptop, no podcast listening, no YouTubes, right?
Go and just allow yourself to think and dream and become something else. On that vacation, tap into your future self identity on that vacation and be thinking about who is the successful Debbie that will come out of this vacation, recharged and refueled to make massive process to make massive progress the second half of the year.
I also want to encourage you to get creative with your marketing as you think about what you could do differently. I'm going to give you an example. I had a client today who was feeling really tangled up with tech. She just turned 73, by the way, and she's like, Oh my gosh, you know, social media and email marketing.
It all feels like so much. And I said, look, you don't have to do any of that. You could call people and meet them in a coffee shop. You could rent a place at the public library and you could do a book club there. All of those are ways to connect with people. When you connect and you build that know like and trust factor, when you teach them about the value of coaching, you have an opportunity to sell them coaching.
How amazing would that be? So grow your know like and trust. If your calendar has time on it, for goodness sakes, offer free coaching. You guys know how I feel about that. Free coaching is the way that you build your reputation. Use the summer to do that. had another question that I want to share with you guys that I got from a client that I think is going to really help you.
She said, look, I'm just wrapping up her first group coaching program. By the way, she had 7 clients in it. Brand new program that she just launched. She had 7 clients and they want to continue. But her story to herself, because the clients didn't tell her this, her story was nobody's going to want to work with me until after Labor Day That fall schedule and I said, well, how can you create an opportunity where they won't say no to working with you now?
She's like, what do you mean? I said, look, you have the coaching program, the group coaching program start the day after Labor Day, but why not incentivize them to join now to commit now and give them private coaching between now and then? She's like, that's amazing. I'm like, offer up your schedule and say, Hey, you get four private sessions with me between now and labor day because you join now.
Who wouldn't want that? And then part of your marketing is to tell them what to use those sessions for. She's like, okay, great. Everybody's going to love that. Yeah. That's how you get creative. You always want to do this with your marketing. You want to think of the objections depending on the season, depending on your client, whatever they've got going on.
Answer those objections. So I'll give you one more example of that. When we get to the holidays, the winter holidays, people are saying like, ah, it's busy. It's Christmas. I'm going to be off work. You know, the kids are going to be home. You know how I answer that objection. I give people an extra month of coaching an entire month.
I say, look, you don't have to worry about being off for the holidays or having family in town or anything else. Cause I'm going to give you an entire month when you join me now, So that you can have extra access if you decide to work, but you also have time to relax and enjoy the holidays. This is the same principle as I told my client about having her group program start in September and offering complimentary private coaching for right now.
Okay. So that is a lot of ideas I've just shared with you. I want you to pick out one or two things. You don't have to do all of them. I just want you to do something. I would suggest that you do that mid year reflection. I would suggest that you think about why somebody should buy coaching from you right now.
That's that summer promotion. And then I would also say make time to make a plan through the end of the year. Make a simple plan.
I want to invite you to join us for our workshop on July 9th. This is actually ideal timing. I'm going to walk you through a mid year business tune up, which means you're going to have an opportunity to think through every step of what I've talked about.
Now, it's not a planning session, but I'm going to talk to you about, Things that could be upgraded in your business or some shifts or changes that you need to make in your business. So it's an ideal time for you to join us. July 9th, make sure you join me. Last thing I want to mention, if you are a coach, this is the ideal time to get your business built.
I can tell you for sure the best time of the year to sell coaching for me is the fall months when everybody wants to end the year strong. So. I want to encourage you to have your business set up for that. I want to encourage you to get your business built now, right now, so you can end the year strong so that you can get your business on track, get things set up.
That's what I want to challenge you to do. Okay, you guys. Thanks for being here. I cannot wait to give you more details about the Life Coach Business Building School. Make sure that you are listening up to hear how we're going to help you build your boutique style coaching business in a new and even better way.
Alright, I'll see y'all soon. Bye bye.
Outro: Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching. All right. Have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.